Getting armor, weapon and valor upgrades via retraining

[andrewt]

How do people feel about this? It might be a balance change but I find it kinda cumbersome to train a unit then have to retrain them to get the valor, armor and weapon bonuses from buildings in that settlement. I've retrained some Venetian heavy infantry and the retraining costs to get the upgrades they have available (valor+1 and second to last plate) is 320 florins. I think their base cost is 570 or something so it's pretty expensive.

[Rothe]

I have noticed the same thing. The upgrading option is nice, but the cost is high. Also, the slots are spent on upgrading units, so you can no longer upgrade units and train 3 new units at the same time even if the upgrade units are at full strenght.

[econ21]

I don't have a good feel for the numbers yet, but a +1 here or there does not seem a big deal when unit defences vary between 0 and 22+. I guess armour varies a lot less, so maybe upgrades are more of a help against missiles?

I tend to view one off payments for troops as almost irrelevant - the key thing for me is the upkeep. Hopefully your units stick around for a long time, so the cumulative upkeep will dwarf the purchase cost. Upgrading a unit rather than building a new one may make sense if you want to keep your total upkeep under control.

But generally, I would only upgrade where convenient, but unless it was a depleted veteran unit I would generally not prioritise it over investing in buildings or new units.

[denmj]

I have also found that I don't get the upgrades all the time either atleast for the +1 valor/experiance. The weapons and armor I get each time. But the +1 seems to be hit or miss. And this is with units trained in that castle.

Made 3 archers got a woodsmans guild. Retrained all three and one gets upgraded the other two do not. I tried to train them again as they showed up under retraining but it just took my money and no upgrade.

[Shahed]

That's happening to me right now.

I had about 15-16 Turcomen without any armor, on campaign against the Eastern Rebel cities.

While they were on campaign I built a padder (?) and then a blacksmith for light mail armor. Then I bring them back about 15% manpower depletion. I put them in que to retrain at the blacksmith thinking I'd get the armor PLUS manpower upgrade.

Sure enough they were retrained, brought to full strength. but NO armor upgrade at all, not leather or light mail. I paid however, for a full upgrade.

So now I have the Barneys knocking at my Western gates and I'd really like to have this Turcomen army upgraded before the next campaign.

Can anyone help ? Am I following the correct sequence/procedure ? Is this a bug ?

edit: had a look in the manual on pg 30-31 of the mainland europe-english version, according to that all you have to do is build the buildings required and an armorer. The higher the level of the armorer the higher level it can upgrade.

I'd be happy if it upgraded to light mail. That would be enough... lol !

[FrauGloer]

Yep, has happened to me, too. I had a Master Chapter House of St. John (+2 Exp.) in Jerusalem plus a Master Swordsmith in Nottingham (+1 Exp. for Knights global), but all knights trained in Jerusalem come out at 0. The thing is, when it was still a Major Chapter house, all units came out at 2 Experience. It seem kind of random (bugged?) to me...

[Rothe]

I think it is just that the city does not have enough of the units for you to recruit, but you certainly can always train up the armor.

The solution is to join units, so that you retrain the manpower depletion by retraining only one seriously undermanned unit instead of multiple ones that lack only 15% men. You can retrain the full units (after joining units to get one full and one depleted one) without spending the recruiting pool in the city/castle. If you try to retrain multiple units with only a few men missing from each, each of them uses up one unit allotment in the recruitment pool and the recharge rate is limited by your buildings.

To effectively join units, do this.

Unit A - at 85% of original strength - valor +2
Unit B - at 85 % original - valor 0

Join the valor 2 unit to the 0 valor unit, to get a depleted unit with at least valor 2 and a full unit.

The way the joining works is that the least experienced men move to the other unit, which might leave you with more valor in the depleted unit than it had before joining.

When you retrain a depleted unit, the new men have the same valor as the average valor is (the one shown in the unit card). This helps you to build experienced armies.

If you can, fill up as many units as you can with your most experienced one without totally using it up, the core of the unit might have 2 more exp than the men you sent out of the unit, and with retraining the unit can "gain" 1-2 valor.

[Shahed]

That's a very useful post, thanks. Excellent explanation of how to merge units.

Now, that is exactly what I am doing, and have been since I noticed this valor 'upgrade' when I merged two units at random. So now I have already merged units and am putting them through the retraining mainly for the armor upgrade. There are enough units in the unit pool but it's still not working.

So this means the reason is not that there are not enough units in the unit pool. Actually if there are not enough units in the unit pool, you cannot retrain for manpower at all. In my case they are being retrained for manpower but not for armor.

[R'as al Ghul]

Sinan,

some Ha units have a limit on how much armour they can have.
More would limit their moveability and is not applied.

R'as

[Shahed]

Ok. Got it.

I removed everything from the que. Saved the game, reloaded.

I put in only 3 units (max unit pool). 1 Turkish Archer, 1 Turcoman Horse, 1 Sipahi. The result was: all three came out with manpower retrained, and only the Turkish Archer & the Turcoman Horse cmae out with armor upgrade in addition. That is perfect.

So what was the problem ?

That's the issue I have not been able to identify. I tried the following:

1. Put in ALL the turcomen to retrain, all 8 of them plus all the Sipahi. More units than are available in the unit pool.

Result: It still worked.

2. I put in only those units that are available in the unit pool.

Result: It still worked.

WORKAROUND: reload the game.

I'm almost certain however that the bug does indeed occur when you put in a que of units to retrain, more than are available. It could also be that the bug occurs when there is a combination of factors, armor, manpower retrain plus lack of manpower. Can't be verified until it occurs again. The workaround is easy enough.

Thanks Rothe you pointed me in the right direction.

[Shahed]

Sinan,

some Ha units have a limit on how much armour they can have.
More would limit their moveability and is not applied.

R'as

True. It was silly in MTW, Turcomen going around with plate armor.
Turcomen do get light mail upgrade though.

I love this new armor system. It's excellent and adds a nice and important detail.

[Derfel von Saljeth]

True. It was silly in MTW, Turcomen going around with plate armor.
Turcomen do get light mail upgrade though.

I love this new armor system. It's excellent and adds a nice and important detail.

I would like a real upgrade statwise. If you give padded armor to a nacked unit, i would like them to have same base armor of other padded armor protected unit . not just 1

[Slaists]

If the idea that valor (even a couple points) help a lot in correct charges, at least for knights - the valor upgrades become crucial. You can have a 0-valor knight unit, not knowing what it's doing in the battlefield or +2 valor upgraded versions that charge much more consistently. I would go for the latter.

[Shahed]

I would like a real upgrade statwise. If you give padded armor to a nacked unit, i would like them to have same base armor of other padded armor protected unit . not just 1

That would make sense for units that have 0 armor, to go to, for example 3 when they get padded armor. Thereafter +1 or so. I wonder if the game has levels for this or is it all +1 ?

[Derfel von Saljeth]

That would make sense for units that have 0 armor, to go to, for example 3 when they get padded armor. Thereafter +1 or so. I wonder if the game has levels for this or is it all +1 ?

Well... they only have 3 armor but they wear a partial plate armor (they are militia pikemen with full armor upgrade)


I hope it will be moddable or implemented somehow

[Shahed]

I wonder if TW will ever reach it's full potential. It seems the further thye go the more there is to add. Which is a good thing IMO, but just hope they don't run out of game concepts.

My idea on armor is a) each level, padded etc has a armor rating i.e 3-4-5 etc b) it changes the way the troops look on the field. Obviously the armor rating takes care of all the other statical survivability factors.

[Quillan]

There seems to be a random bug with the upgrades for armor and experience of newly recruited units. As Spain, I can recruit almughavars with 1 experience if I have a big enough barracks at a castle. I recruit 3 of them. They come out with 0 exp. I retrain all 3. 2 of them now have 1 xp, one does not, but I was charged for all 3 upgrades. I retrain the 1 again. It still has no experience. I retrain the 1 a third time, and now finally it gets the 1 xp it was supposed to have at the start. I've ordered 3 units to retrain for armor upgrades when they were at full strength, and not gotten any, or only gotten 1 or 2 units with the upgrades. I can't depend on it working. However, retraining to restore the unit to full strength works perfectly.

[Shahed]

Yeap, that's it. I've posted a link to this thread in the bug list. I'll eventually summarise the findings and repost in the bug list, but if anyone else wants to go ahead and do so, just please include my findings in it as well.

This is one that needs fixing (as do many other 'important' things) but as no one yet knows what causes the bug it may be hard to fix.

[dopp]

Based on my observations, the armor values for the various levels runs as such:

Unarmored = 0 armor : Most militias, musketeers, Tercio Pikemen, arab units
Padded = 4 armor : Italian militia, Jinetes, other light cavalry
Light Mail/Splint = 5 armor : Mailed Knights, various swordsmen, Moorish miltia
Heavy Mail/Splint/Breastplates = 7 armor : Feudal Knights, SAPs, bodyguards
Partial Plate = 8 armor : Chivalric Knights
Full Plate = 9 armor : Late Bodyguards
Advanced Plate = 11 armor : Gendarmes, Gothic Knights

The most important jump is from unarmored to padded armor. It's a whopping 4 points. If you upgraded an unarmored unit to padded instead, it only gives 1 armor. Kind of lame really. There's also 2-point jumps from light mail to heavy and from full plate to advanced.

Say you take a unit of spear miltia and upgrade it 3 times to heavy mail. The graphic ingame shows them with shiny new helmets, steel breastplates/leggings and chainmail. But their armor reads as only 3. Take a unit that comes with padded armor when first recruited, like Italian spear militia. It starts off with 4 armor. Upgrade it 2 times to heavy mail as well. The same shiny helmets and armor. But they at least have a respectable 6 armor (it's still 1 less than they should be getting).

Some units are even more messed up. Tercio pikemen and musketeers/arquebusiers start of unarmored and their first upgrade level is not padded, it's light mail. So I upgrade them, expecting at least 2 armor, +1 for padded and +1 for mail. I only get 1 armor. With heavy mail and an identical appearance on the battlefield to fully upgraded pikemen, the elite Tercio pikemen have 2 armor compared to 3. I love using Tercio pikemen, but they take hideous casualties because their armor is so bad. I love using musketeers too, and if they had 5 armor like they are supposed to with the light mail upgrade then they could really press their advantage against enemy missile troops (their bullets would ignore enemy armor while their own modest armor protects them from return fire). As it is, however, unarmored troops (most city troops and advanced units) are unfairly gimped because the upgrade system doesn't take the huge jump from unarmored to padded into account, leaving a gap in armor protection between them and castle units (that mostly come with correct armor values) that they cannot close.

Please report this as a bug. I tried over at TWC but they are having problems with the site. A good temporary fix would be to simply give all unarmored units 3 armor to close the gap at the start, although it will not fix the light to heavy mail gap or the full to advanced plate gap.

[Shahed]

Tragic.

Unarmored 0 is fine, but the jump to padded should be 4, and so on.

You report this is the bug thread on top of the forum, it's a sticky.

[Derfel von Saljeth]

I tried to post this on http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...cID=9646.topic

but maybe you could try to bump that and explain with your better english what i meant :)

[dopp]

No account with them, unfortunately. Copy my post and paste.

[Derfel von Saljeth]

Ok done, and linked them this thread :) Lets hope some one will give us attemption...

Anyway... you said a fast fix would be to give unarmored units 3 base armor to start, so with upgrade there will be less gap betwen grafical skin and real stats :)
Maybe give it to semi professional troop like militia, and leave peasants without armor at all

[dopp]

Peasants can have padded armor too, so might as well give them 3 armor too.

[Kobal2fr]

Wouldn't it be doable once we have the unpacker to mod each armor upgrade to provide the right base armor stat, and multiply the upgrade cost by the actual number of points if gives as well ? (eg if +1 armor costs 50 florins, then upgrading militia to padded = 200 florins)

[Quillan]

I sort of doubt it. I think the armor upgrade system just adds 1, 2, or 3 to the base value. What will be possible is to change the base value, so the unarmored units can be given a base value of 3, which with upgrades should bring things more or less into line, although it will make them a little tougher than they should be in their unarmored state.

[Kobal2fr]

I'm not sure either, having never modded myself, but I figure that if each unit can only get such and such upgrades, from *here* to *there*, and also given the fact that each armor level has it's own appearance, then each armor type must be defined somewhere, and its properties hopefully are open to modification.
If there's a line of code somewhere that states "if militia is upgraded once then give militia padded_militia skin", it probably can be turned into "if militia is upgraded once then give militia padded skin and +3 def", no ? Anyone with Rome/MTW modding experience (or anyone from CA, but that's asking for much ) around to answer that kind of technical stuff ?

That's the only way I can think of to change things in a satisfying manner... While I certainly want plate-clad militia to stand fire as well as plate-clad knights, and am excited by the possibilities it entails, I do *not* want peasants and militia to withstand any kind of fire when they are buck naked.

Besides, giving naked units a base armor of 3 doesn't adress the problem of later militias that go from naked to half-plate in one go... And giving *those* chainmail-like base armor when they're naked won't do either.

[Kobal2fr]

I'm not sure either, having never modded myself, but I figure that if each unit can only get such and such upgrades, from *here* to *there*, and also given the fact that each armor level has it's own appearance, then each armor type must be defined somewhere, and its properties hopefully are open to modification.
If there's a line of code somewhere that states "if militia is upgraded once then give militia padded_militia skin", it probably can be turned into "if militia is upgraded once then give militia padded skin and +3 def", no ? Anyone with Rome/MTW modding experience (or anyone from CA, but that's asking for much ) around to answer that kind of technical stuff ?

That's the only way I can think of to change things in a satisfying manner... While I certainly want plate-clad militia to stand fire as well as plate-clad knights, and am excited by the possibilities it entails, I do *not* want peasants and militia to withstand any kind of fire when they are buck naked.

Besides, giving naked units a base armor of 3 doesn't adress the problem of later militias that go from naked to half-plate in one go... And giving *those* chainmail-like base armor when they're naked won't do either.

[Quillan]

Well, I'm basing this off RTW, but in that game there was a file down in the data folder called export_descr_unit.txt, which contained the specifics on every unit in the game. It had weapon stats, amount of ammo carried, attack rating, armor rating and type (flesh, leather, metal - metal gave penalties in desert), defensive skills and so forth. So it's very easy to go in, find the line for Spanish Pikemen (or whatever the game file refers to Tercio Pikemen as ) and change their armor from "0, flesh" to "3, flesh" and let the game engine take care of the upgrades from there. However, in the corresponding file for buildings, I don't recall there being a way to modify the amount of armor that could be given.

[Kobal2fr]

Yes, but I believe things might work differently in M2, because a unit starting with flesh armor and sounds will use metal sounds when upgraded to say chainmail (if I'm not mistaken, to be honest I haven't payed attention to this sort of thing while playing. I will now ), whereas in RTW armor upgrades didn't change the type of armor worn at all, it was a much more generic system...

Guess we'll know for sure when the Holy Grail, I mean the patch+unpacker, is available